UNIQUELY POSITIONED: FAYETTEVILLE TECH IN CONTEXT

Joshua James

Fayetteville Technical Community College

About the Author

I created this presentation because I constantly remind my students of the importance of context. No reading exists in a vacuum: its content is informed by myriad factors. Similarly, no college exists in a vacuum. Fayetteville Tech is influenced by its context. I’m not a sociologist or anthropologist, I’m an English teacher, so my purpose here is not to draw conclusions but to shed light on the area in which we work and on ways we can help our students succeed.

Thesis

Fayetteville Technical Community College serves two very distinct populations: those who are connected with Fort Bragg and those who are local to the area, the latter of whom live in an environment that is typified by dynamism, diversity, and disparity.

According to anthropologist Catherine Lutz, there are two or more Fayettevilles: “one reaps wealth from soldiers’ salaries, and another only touches the money briefly as it works minimum wage retail jobs” (201).

Terms

• FMSA – Fayetteville Metropolitan Statistical Area
• Race – socially constructed categories used to demarcate populations by appearance or ancestry
• People of Color – inclusive of the following U.S. Census categories of race: black, Latino, Asian, mixed, Native American. In essence, non-white populations.
• Poverty – at or below the federal poverty level.

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Driving to Fayetteville through different North Carolinas

Table of Contents

Dynamism

• Growth
• Future

Diversity

• Origins
• Age
• Diversity Ranking

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Disparity

• Upward mobility
• School poverty
• Wages
• Integration and economics
• Hate and Extremism

DYNAMISM

Changes in place and population

Dynamism

Generations of Fayettevillians have witnessed dramatic change: secession, Sherman’s march, the rise and fall of textiles, the decline of farming, the Civil Rights Movement, the Global War on Terror, and the convulsions that come from being a center of American foreign policy. What results is a mixture of regional, national, and global influences and histories contained in a city of a little over 208,000.

Quick Facts

• “Full-scale integration of the county’s schools took place in the early 1970s” (Parker 143).
• As of June 2022, the unemployment rate for Fayetteville was 5.9% (BLS).
• As of a 2020 estimate, 19.9% of the people in Fayetteville lived in poverty (USCB Fact Finder).
• As of 2021, there were 539 places of worship in a ten-mile radius of downtown, plus at least 55 businesses with the phrase “All American” in their name, 58 used/new car dealers, over 50 tattoo studios, and 13 adult/gentlemen’s clubs in Fayetteville (Yellow Pages; ARDA).

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A map of places of worship within a ten-mile radius of the city (ARDA).

Honeycutt Place Housing Site

Built during the early days of World War II to house non-commissioned officers from Fort Bragg, Honeycutt Place Housing Site (550 housing units as of June 1941) was ultimately sold by the federal government to the Fayetteville City Board of Education in 1959.

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Federal Works Agency; CCRoD; Life Magazine

Fayetteville Tech now sits on parts of that land.

Honeycutt Place Housing Site

Feb. 1956

Growth

“US Demography 1790 to Present”; Richard Stradling

Growth

Cline

Future

Equity Atlas

DIVERSITY

North Carolina’s Mosaic

Diversity

Fayetteville and Fayetteville Tech both represent tremendous diversity – but what does diversity mean? Literally, diversity is simply variety: variety in race/ethnicity, age, origin, career, and all the other various factors which identify us and, regardless of our intent, inform how people perceive us.

Origins

• As of 2018, 44% of North Carolinians were born outside the state (Stanford).
• Of the 100 counties in North Carolina, Cumberland has the 9^th highest percentage of people born outside the state (Tippett).

Age

• Out of NC counties, Cumberland County has the second youngest population by average with 25% of the population under age 18 and 30% of the population between 18 and 34. The only county with a younger population is Onslow County.
• For ages 65 and older, Cumberland County ranks third to last by percentage of population, with those 65 and older making up only 11% of the overall population. Only Hoke (10%) and Onslow (9%) have smaller percentages.

Social Explorer

City vs College Demographics

Student Profile by Race for FTCC Educational Programs; Social Explorer

Diversity Score

The Diversity Score is a measure of racial/ethnic diversity in a given region. Here, it measures the representation of six major racial/ethnic groups (White, Black, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American, and Mixed/other race) in the population. Latinos include people of Hispanic origin of any race and all other groups are non-Hispanic. The maximum diversity score (1.79) would occur if each group were evenly represented in the region. The following data is for 2019.

Diversity Rankings�Top 10 of 150 metro areas

1. Vallejo-Fairfield, CA (1.46)
2. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA (1.40)
3. Washington, D.C.-Arlington, VA-Alexandria, MD (1.36)
4. Las Vegas-Paradise, NV (1.36)
5. Stockton, CA (1.35)
6. New York City-Northern NJ-Long Island (1.34)
7. Houston-Baytown-Sugarland, TX (1.32)
8. Fayetteville, NC (1.31)
9. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (1.31)
10. Sacramento-Arden Arcade-Roseville, CA (1.30)

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Equity Atlas

DISPARITY

The Geography and Economy of Diversity

ProQuest Sanborn Maps

Disparity

Saying that Fayetteville is diverse doesn’t tell the entire story. The diversity of the city is distributed, as it is in most American cities, unevenly. Access to quality schools, housing, parks, sidewalks, and other advantages are dependent on a myriad of factors rooted both in the city’s past and other contexts.

It’s no secret that in 2015 “Harvard University released a study ranking Fayetteville dead last out of the country’s 100 largest economic centers in earnings potential for children growing up in poverty.

A New York Times analysis of the study — called ‘The Equality of Opportunity Project’ — found that Cumberland is ‘among the worst counties in the U.S. in helping poor children up the income ladder. It ranks 18th out of 2,478 counties, better than almost no county in the nation’” (Barnes). The project is now called The Opportunity Atlas and is housed at Harvard.

The Equality of Opportunity Project

Opportunity Atlas

School Poverty

School poverty level categories are defined by the share of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch (FRPL) and include: "Low" (<25% FRPL), "Mid-low" (25-50% FRPL), "Mid-high" (50-75% FRPL), and "High" (>75% FRPL) (Equity Atlas).

Equity Atlas

2021 WalletHub Job Study

“Best Cities for Jobs”

A study released on 4 January 2022 found that Fayetteville is 163^rd out of 182 cities in the United States for finding a job. Fayetteville was also found to have some of the slowest employment growth. The study took into account 31 different factors rather than simply looking at job availability,

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Factors such as the percentage of workers in poverty, local unemployment rate, starting salary, and job satisfaction all played a role in the score.

Equity Atlas

Looking at Demographic Distribution

• 2020 United States Census Racial Demography maps. Census tracts are shaded darker or lighter by the predominance of racial/ethnic categories. The following will highlight segregation within Fayetteville.

Areas of least integration also contain Fayetteville’s socioeconomic extremes

Van Story Hills: 70% white

Average home value: $251,750

9% live in poverty

8% unemployment

Murchison Road Area: 88% people of color

Average home value: $41,063

25% live in poverty

15% unemployment

Social Explorer; 2020 Census; Trulia

Old Wilmington Road Area: 91% people of color

Average home value: $38,625

60% live in poverty

13% unemployment

Murchison Road Area�Census Tracts 10, 11, 24.01, 24.02

“The corridor began to flourish in the 19th century with the arrival of the State Colored Normal School, the oldest state-supported black college of its kind in North Carolina. Today, that college is known as Fayetteville State University” (Barnes).

“Fayetteville State University…helped form a surrounding community at College Heights through waves of refugees who came from the 1920s on to find public education for their children and freedom from rural racial oppression” (Lutz 6).

“In the early days, the area surrounding the college quickly changed from woods and orchards to blossoming neighborhoods filled with black educators, nurses, soldiers and other professionals. Murchison Road became Fayetteville's hub of black social life, business and culture.

Community leaders who still live in neighborhoods surrounding Murchison Road — educator William T. Brown, former City Councilman D.J. Haire and the Rev. Aaron Johnson — describe an almost idyllic lifestyle there through the 1960s.

Murchison Road Area�Census Tracts 10, 11, 24.01, 24.02

Today, property crimes are all-to-common in the neighborhoods along Murchison Road. A major reason, Johnson, Haire and Brown say, is that the old guard has moved on or died, and their properties have been handed down from one renter to the next. The sense of community the men described so fondly has all but vanished.

Poverty is even worse for children in neighborhoods on the west side of Murchison Road…There, 54 percent of children live below the poverty line, according to the census, and the median household income is only $26,899” (Barnes).

According to a 2008 study commissioned by the city of Fayetteville, “neighborhoods and community along Murchison Road have long been stigmatized as less desirable and neglected by the general populace of Fayetteville.”

Murchison Road Area�Census Tracts 10, 11, 24.01, 24.02

2020 Census; Valentine and Brady; CPI Inflation Calculator; Equity Atlas; Brooks; Social Explorer

Possibly exacerbating Murchison’s issues is the dilemma over the annexation of Shaw Heights. When Fayetteville annexed 27 square miles and 42,000 residents in the “Big Bang” annexation of 2005, the following happened:

Shaw Heights

Equity Atlas; Social Explorer

2000

2015

Being left out of annexation, Shaw Heights does not have access to city services including sewer and police. The percentage of people who are rent burdened is 71%, unemployment is 11%, and renter occupancy is roughly 76%.

Shaw Heights

These photos show abandoned structures along Gregory and Shaw Roads. “The area comprises 630.89 acres of dilapidated houses and trailers speckled with some nicer, well-kept homes. Most of the houses were built right after World War II and during the Vietnam War. A 2008 county land use plan refers to the area as ‘showing age and decline’” (Valentine).

More recently, “the city and county are discussing the possibility of extending city jurisdiction to Shaw Heights, without annexing it” (“Good government”).

According to The Fayetteville Observer, “At the northern end [of Murchison], commercial developers are buying up land and the city is considering that area as one possible location for the sporting field complex that’s also part of the city’s parks-and-recreation expansion project (“The Outer Loop”).

Google StreetView

Old Wilmington Road Area�Census Tract 2

Once home to Campbell Terrace Apartments. These public housing projects were built during the 1940s and 50s and were still in use in 2012 when they were included on Seymour Johnson AFB’s “Off-Limits” list.

“In 2009, the city tore down the crime-ridden Delona Gardens and Campbell Terrace housing projects and replaced them with Hope VI housing, a $110 million public-private investment. In all, seven apartment complexes were built, including six in the Old Wilmington Road neighborhood, that added 642 apartments and 36 single-family home…

Although crime has declined in the neighborhood, there's little evidence that Hope VI alone has, or will, attract significant commercial investment or mixed-income housing and improve the health, education and economic status of the people who live there.

The fact remains that almost everyone in the neighborhood is poor, that there is no grocery store within walking distance for most people and that the community's elementary school is among the lowest performing in the county” (Barnes).

“Pitts”; “Off-limits areas and establishments”; Equity Atlas; Brooks

Old Wilmington Road Area�Census Tract 2

2020 US Census; Brooks; “Poverty in Fayetteville: We’ve spent millions on new public housing, but what’s changing?”

New public housing in the Old Wilmington Road area (Fayetteville Observer).

Van Story Hills�Census Tracts 7.01 & 7.02

With it’s beginnings around Van Story Pond in the 1950s and 60s, Van Story Hills soon outpaced the Devane Street neighborhood as the core of Fayetteville’s upper middle class to wealthy citizens. Other well-to-do neighborhoods of Fayetteville include Skye Drive and some parts of the Haymount area.

Social Explorer; Brooks; CPI Inflation Calculator

The Outlier�Integration and Socioeconomic Extremes

Social Explorer 2020

What’s happening here?

Census Tract 5

Latino 11%

White 41%

Black 41%

Asian 1%

Other 5%

Native American 4%

2 or more 8%

What’s happening here?

Census Tract 5

-38% poverty rate

-60% renter occupied

-51% unemployment

Massey Hill�Census Tract 5

Puritan Mills Village, plant closed 1975 (Kirby and Maness)

Victory Mills Village, plant closed 1975

Tolar, Hart, and Holt Mill Village, plant closed 1978

Cumberland County GIS Data Viewer

Massey Hill

“Most textile workers labored in factories familiar for generations in Hope Mills, Massey Hill, and downtown Fayetteville. But most plants were now owned by large firms such as Burlington Mills or Dixie Yarns. The paternalistic mill village society was disappearing as blacks and commuters obtained jobs in the plants. Several postwar years were good for textiles. By 1965, however, fewer than 4,000 workers were in manufacturing” (Parker 148).

Among the newer residents of the area are the Hell’s Angels, whose headquarters sits just across the street from the site of the old Victory Mill – which is now a site for new housing.

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Google StreetView

Massey Hill

Brooks; “2020 Census”

Massey Hill

Tolar, Hart, and Holt Mill, 1909

Child labor at the Tolar Mill, 1914

The Tolar Mill lot today

“…what is left of Poe's Bottom, Puritan, Massey Hill and Lakedale tries to survive a new overpass, rental property and strangers without ties to what once was.

`It's nothing like it was,' E.A. Warner said. `I've been a member of the Massey Hill Lions Club for 35 years, and I'm ashamed to say I don't know everyone.'

`It is so sad,' Barbara Hawley said.

Gary Warner is one of the last old-timers on the hill. He hopes that things will get better, although he realizes the mill days will never be again.

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The third and fourth generations of Massey Hill find themselves living in places like Hope Mills, Gray's Creek, Cypress Lakes, Gates Four, Bordeaux, Briarwood” (Kirby and Maness, 1995).

Hate and Extremism

• While most of Fayetteville’s social and economic justice issues are rooted in structure, economics, and public policy, there is also the very real presence of extremism.
• In the past (2017), according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a chapter of ACT for America operated in Fayetteville. According to the SPLC, ACT: “pushes wild anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, denigrates American Muslims and deliberately conflates mainstream and radical Islam.” That same year, a chapter of North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement operated in nearby Wade.
• A chapter of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the Southern National Congress (Neo-Confederate) operated out of nearby Sanford. The Klan also recently operated out of nearby Holly Springs. The Proud Boys have also made appearances in Fayetteville in recent years.
• Wade Page, who murdered six people at a Sikh temple in Milwaukee in 2011, was radicalized while stationed at Fort Bragg in the mid-1990s. This was during the same period “when three paratroopers from Fort Bragg murdered a black man and a black woman in Fayetteville to earn their spider web tattoos, racist badges of honor that sometimes signify that their bearers have killed non-whites” (Elias).

Recap

None of this is to suggest that Fayetteville is a bad place to live. On the contrary, I’ve lived in the city since November 2011 and have come to love it.

Still, the city suffers from the “Fayettenam” reputation it gained during the Vietnam era as well as perceptions of it being a crime-ridden wasteland of strip malls and strip clubs.

If anything, this presentation is meant to show that Fayetteville’s struggles are not pathological but structural.

But how does knowing that help us?

Two Fayettevilles

Fayetteville is a city often defined by the presence of Fort Bragg and the 82^nd Airborne yet our student-soldiers and their dependents, once they complete their education at FTCC, often take their skills elsewhere. Our local students are a different story. They return to their places of employment or seek new employment within Cumberland County. They live in Massey Hill, on Murchison, off Old Wilmington Road, on Shaw, Cliffdale, Bunce, Raeford, in Gray’s Creek, Hope Mills, and every place in between.

Like any American city, Fayetteville’s population is the result of historical patterns that are rooted in economics, segregation (both by law and in fact), the decline of certain industries, and other factors.

Unlike most American cities, Fayetteville is relatively small while also incredibly diverse. It is both southern and cosmopolitan. It is unique and so our students’ perspectives and needs will be unique.

It is an understatement to say that Fayetteville is unique.

In this context, Fayetteville Tech is uniquely positioned to be a community college as well as a community resource.

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Works Cited

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